


First Impressions

by FaiaHae



Series: Kids in the Dark [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ashe gets arrested, Baby's first arrest, Baby's first.....10 arrests, Deadlock Gang, Deadlock Jesse McCree, First Meetings, Gen, Mentions of Omnic racism, like two seconds of McBob sorry, talk shit get hit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 16:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16580000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: Ashe keeps looking for a life she wants to lead and is starting to find it in the spaces between her school days and her parents paying her bail





	First Impressions

The first time Ashe met B.O.B she was struck with the certainty that her parents didn’t care if she lived or died, and it hit her like an anvil.

 

Oh, he was sweet enough, and a “high security model”, but that didn’t mean anything. A few states away God programs were tearing down the world as she knew it, the only world she’d ever known, and her parents were willing to leave her alone with an _omnic._

 

Oh, she didn’t hate them. She didn’t think they should be subservient like her parents did, didn’t think they weren’t people the way some of the radio stations screamed about, Before.

 

Before.

 

But she wasn’t an _idiot._ At 10 years old, Ashe knew what God Programs could do, knew it robbed omnics of their will and turned them into puppets. And this one- this one couldn’t have been much different. Even if he was big and strong and inclined his head at her like a big puppy, and she wanted so badly to like him.

 

She wanted...so badly. To like him.

 

And he seemed to want just as badly to be liked- he didn’t just carry her bags and pick her up from school with an umbrella, even once they’d moved deeper into the desert to avoid the conflict. He’d told her about the dangers of sunburn as she’d tried to outpace him and he’d kept up at a little hopping run behind her.

 

She gave in, eventually. She stopped calling him B-O-B and just started calling him Bob, and started helping him with his joints when the sands got caught up in them. One day she was waiting for him outside school- a rare early class release- and one of the kids had gone by and yelled-

 

_“Where’s your Tinbucket, Lizzie? Finally gone off to join the cause?”_

 

She’d told the officer with her eyes all big and brimming with fake tears that she had no idea what happened next, it had all gone black for a moment, and of course she was lying. She’d punched his teeth out and broke two of his ribs, and she thanked whatever higher power was listening that the police got there before Bob did and he didn’t have to get involved.

 

She didn’t have to bother with the lies, anyway. Some well-placed bribes and she was walking out of the police station, to a rare rainstorm in the desert, and Bob was there waiting for her.

 

Unlike her parents, he’d bothered to ask if she was okay. She didn’t know what to tell him.

 

By the time she was 13 the crisis was over and she’d made it a habit, was on a friendly first name basis (her real name- not the one her parents gave her) with most of the officers in town (they got a nice pay raise whenever she got picked up) and they were bored enough that when she whined about solitary _again_ they’d snorted and relented, and stuck her in the “Drunk tank” with a kid who couldn’t have been much older then she was, laying on his back and singing _Sweet Home Alabama_ to the underside of the cowboy hat on his face.

 

This- she decided. This was going to be her first friend.

 

She didn’t state her intentions to him, but she’d leaned out through the bars and flopped an envelope at one of the police officers.

 

“Hey, Harris! Is this enough to pay his bail?”

 

Harris took the envelope from her and whistled as he opened it.

 

“No shit it is, Ashe. what’ve you got this for and why shouldn’t I seize it?”

 

She snorted.

  
“I don’t think my parents understand that having someone pay their own ransom wouldn’t work, so I have to carry it everywhere.”

Harris rolled his eyes, getting up to get the cell keys.

 

“Your folks have got more money than sense, and i’m sure they’ll get someone to pay your bail in a bit, so why don’t you take McCree and git. Bob’s been in the lobby an hour and he’s making people nervous.”

 

She raised her eyebrows.

“What’s he doin’?”

 

“Knitting. I guess someone thinks knitting needles are a lethal weapon or something.”

  
She snorted, and then gestured at the kid in the cowboy hat, who was still warbling a tune that sounded less coherant by the minute

 

“Think you could bring Bob in? I can’t carry him.”

  


The feral cat noise that ‘McCree’ made when Bob picked him up was already worth the money, even more so when the boy got the hat off his face and realized who was picking him up.

 

For a moment Ashe was worried- some people would react _violently_ to being picked up by an omnic, especially without warning. But she took her cue from Harris- calm at her elbow and grinning, and all her worry seemed to be for nothing.

The boy reached up and patted Bob’s face.

 

“Come here often?” He drawled.

 

Bob looked to Ashe with an expression that managed confusion pretty well for what little emoteing hardware he had, and McCree took that moment to roll up and kiss him on the cheek. Then he passed out.

 

Oh yeah, Ashe decided. They were going to be _best friends._


End file.
